A Christian church will be built in Turkey - the first non-Muslim religious building in the last 90 years.
In a meeting of 'religious representatives' in Istanbul, Turkey on Friday, the group approved the construction of a Syriac Christian Church in a suburb of Yesilkoy near the shores of the Sea of Marmara.
The land has reportedly been donated by the local government, though the Syriac Christian community will be the ones to carry the building expenses.
According to a report by Al Arabiya, approximately 100,000 Christians remain in the country, 20,000 of which come from the ancient Syriac Christian group. Turkey is almost entirely a Muslim country, with reportedly 99 percent of its 80 million population professing followers of Islam.
Despite the large disparity between the different religious groups in the Asian country, Turkey has been allowing Christians and other non-Muslim groups to practice their own faith.
While there are still some on-going discrimination issues and prejudice against non-Muslims, the condition in Turkey is considered much better than other Islamic countries in the region.
In the report, churches have only been rehabilitated since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s.